GNU/Linux

He was very happy with the way PCLinuxOS had expanded the possibilities of his IBM, like the viewing of DVD movies and the burning of CD-R/W. And mostly that he didn’t find it difficult at all to get used to KDE interface. He was a bit apprehensive at first, but the end result was very much to his liking.

Open, Free

Similarly, open-source software is created by groups working on “patches,” as programmers call them. Anyone can contribute, and the most useful ideas thrive. A result has been successes like the Linux operating system and the Firefox Internet browser.

The Chamber of Commerce of Ferrara, the first PloneGov Italian member, invites 100 representatives from the public sector and open source experts to participate to the official launch of PloneGov in Italy on September 16, 2008.

Windows Mobile has had a very hard life penetrating the mobile market; today, in 2008, Windows Mobile is still tottering. The only really usable device I’ve seen using it was one made by HTC: Andrea was showing it to me, pointing out that without HTC’s proprietary UI extensions (which are very iPhone-ish), HTC PDAs would be mobile nightmares. I am holding my breath, waiting for the HTC Dream to be released: that’s an Android-based PDA which should make the iPhone feel like a text-based terminal. And yes, Android is based on Linux. I suspect that once people start noticing Android-based devices (and they will, once HTC Dream comes out), the Windows Mobile market will shrink even further.

GNU/Linux

The long awaited Zenwalk 5.2 is now available. In the 4 months since the last release many enhancements have been made. The Zenwalk GNU/Linux OS brings to its users both the latest stable software, a well polished Desktop and an ever-increasing software repository.

KDE was very busy at LinuxTag this year. We were present with two main booths – Amarok and KDE – and a whole bunch of talks within our own track. Additionally, Aaron Seigo gave a well-received keynote on Wednesday, painting a vibrant vision of the desktop in a mobile world, and the direction KDE is heading in.

I then added the KDE desktop environment and was all set. My startup time is around 30 seconds and shutdown even less. I have the 3D Compiz Fusion running and everyone at work was really impressed by the speed and look. Texstar and crew really outdid themselves on this one. As of now, there is no way VISTA will ever be re-installed. The only thing I regret is that I had to pay for VISTA, and it counts as a sale for Microsoft. I wonder what the actual figures are for VISTA usage, and how many people have done what I did, and upgrade to Linux?

Firefox

Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) fixed about 40 bugs identified after Mozilla issued the first release candidate three weeks ago. Among the higher-profile patches added to RC2 was one that addressed a performance problem in Firefox for Linux .

Leftovers

Meanwhile, as ordered, fish installs the Windows server. It sits on top of a cabinet, plugged in and running. True, it’s not actually connected to the network or being used for anything productive, but it’s running.

And when the managers come in for a tour of the server room, they see their Windows server, are satisfied and never return.

“The box crashes once in a while — it’s not actually doing anything, but it still crashes — so we just reboot it when we notice,” fish says. “Since it’s not officially monitored, it doesn’t count in our downtime stats.

“Far as I know, it’s still there, wasting electricity. But it’s what they wanted.”

Some recent entries about OpenDocument format and OOXML warned that attempts were made to change the story (Microsoft-induced embellishments). One has to be extremely careful when listening to those who claim to be involved. In fact, just under a couple of days ago, the following pointer served a reminder of our chance to exploit transparency, correct disinformation, and prevent manipulation. As Rob Weir said a long time ago, with ODF he lives in a glass house.

Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) Technical Committee. The new TC would provide a means for software implementors and service providers to create applications that adhere to the ODF specification and are able to interoperate. Proposers include representatives from Ars Aperta, IBM, and Novell; Rob Weir of IBM is designated as the discussion leader.

I can tell you that from what I know, and I know a fair amount, that X marks the spot where a lot of eyeballs are needed. I have no doubt that Microsoft wishes to use ODF for its own purposes, and I know for a fact that some kind of liaison is what some who seem to me to be happily doing whatever Microsoft wants have been hoping for, namely some mechanism for ODF to coordinate with SC34 in ISO that would operate a bit like the relationship between the Unicode Consortium and JTC 1/SC 2, who jointly maintain the Unicode standard.

[...]

This is the moment to pay full attention, if this is something you care about and you wish to avoid the Microsoft EEE. Stay polite at all times, of course, if you say anything, and you needn’t say anything, but do follow along and please keep us posted on anything you see that sounds peculiar. I’ll try to do the same.

If Microsoft wants its standard to stand on equal footing with the ODF, it needs to stop embedding closed binary objects in the Office format, and stop treating it as proprietary.

It’s quite likely that Microsoft will (at least try to) do to ODF what it oncedid to HTML. That’s what makes vigilance ever so important. █

“We’re disheartened because Microsoft helped W3C develop the very standards that they’ve failed to implement in their browser. We’re also dismayed to see Microsoft continue adding proprietary extensions to these standards when support for the essentials remains unfinished.”

It has been a long time since we last mentioned GPLv3 in the context of ACT (or vice versa). ACT has littered the World Wide Web with GPLv3 smears and libel, most likely on behalf of a very major client.

This apparently-national/global entity called “Association for Competitive Technology” (how ambitious a name!) is little more than the public face of Jonathan Zuck, who has a small lobbying firm/pressure group whose big customer is Microsoft. It pretends to be operating in the interest of small businesses, but it’s little more than a law-manipulating shill-for-hire pool — one that’s intended to serve large (and paying) customers.

“Microsoft was bound to be negatively affected and it couldn’t sit aside idly. It needed to throw a wrench in.”When GPLv3 made its debut — and even beforehand — there was a media storm that was intended to daemonise this good licence. The bad reputation was partly generated not by those who are open source developers but by those to whom Free software is a threat; a finance threat to be more precise. Microsoft was bound to be negatively affected and it couldn’t sit aside idly. It needed to throw a wrench in. To again credibility in its criticism, a seemingly broad mouthpiece (proxy) would be needed though. ACT was only one of them, but probably the most prominent one at the time.

Palamida continues to track adoption of the GPLv3 and it indicates that the oceans of FUD Microsoft has bought itself, including low-key payments to academics (never forget academic kickbacks), were at best able to slow down — but never to defeat — adoption of this evolutionary licence.

The year has gone by quite quickly since the GPL v3 was first released. We have just entered into the month of the release, and it is only 23 days until a complete year has passed. It doesn’t seem like we have been tracking the GPL v3 and its derivatives for a year, but it is more believable when you look at the count. Cumulatively, the GPL v3 and its derivatives have gained over 2800 adopters, which is an impressive number. Thousands of projects have, and now we can more confidently say thousands more will adopt the GPL v3, proving its significance in the open source community.

Surely enough, there will be those who are not easily convinced by empty accusations, so we bring back some articles from last year. Recall ACT and remember how much Microsoft loves them. It needs them, just like it needs CompTIA [1, 2].

It would only be fair to state what these pressure groups really are about. In practice, it’s little less than legalised bribery, a scam. Typical signs: pompous Washington-based people in suits and some name for a firm that’s intended to generalise and expand its scope. It make it seem like more than a one-man operation (Enderle ‘group’, anyone?) or a small part-time/casual group of affiliates. Had the congress been more ethical, groups like these would be shut down and declared illegal. But they are not declared illegal, so it’s something we must live with and at the very least inform people of.

“Let’s make it clear that [ACT] is Microsoft’s lobbying front and that they are going to paint as negative a picture as they can,” Perens told eWEEK in an interview.

“Obviously, GPL software is displacing Microsoft enough to have them concerned, and it’s doing it at customers who are important to them. A lawyer’s job is to scare the other side if they can–because they know it’s cheaper than winning a case in court,” he said.

But ACT, a Washington-based technology lobby group whose membership includes large companies like eBay, Oracle, Orbitz and VeriSign, and which was founded in 1998 in response to the Microsoft antitrust case, is largely dismissed by those in the open-source community as nothing more than a lobby group for the interests of Microsoft and those other large corporations.

Mark Taylor, a former head of the Open Source Consortium in the UK, thinks the whole thing is being blown out of all proportion.

He told us: “The only people worrying about the GPL draft are people like ACT. Everyone else is really pleased with the draft. The original GPL aimed to prevent deals like the one between Novell and Microsoft. They just found a loophole. This draft closes it.”

ACT wasn’t the only Microsoft lobbying front that battled GPLv3. There are the usual anti-Linux figures such as Dan Lyons and Rob Enderle. for example. To give you an idea of how it works, read the following old piece.

Some of the bad publicity about GPL3 is deliberate. A particularly bad article by Dan Lyons of Forbes magazine painted an offensive picture of GPL3 and Richard Stallman, even accusing Stallman of having sex with flowers (!!!) after Lyons failed to comprehend a scientific joke.

The GPLv3 FUD may have not been successful, but Jonathan Zuck and his vile lobbying arm are currently fighting for software patents in Europe [1, 2, 3, 4] and fighting against ODF (you can easily find Zuck slandering ODF in Congress and in the press).

ACT continues to do Microsoft’s crusades, which is why we write this post. It’s partly for future reference. Going back to the point made at the top, if Europe cannot declare this group’s activity illegal, it should at least block their arrival at the continent. Didn’t the Indian universities teach us a lesson quite recently about colonialism? Didn’t Malaysia and South Africa tell us how despicable lobbying arms can be? It shouldn’t be seen as just morally unacceptable; it should be considered corrupt. It needs to be stopped. Below we append some memorable quotes from last week. █

“That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).”

“If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).“